Bounty Systems
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Sat Mar 18 00:28:21 UTC 2006
Ken Causey wrote:
> Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form. I
> think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
> if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining. What I mean is that a bounty
> is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
> in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
> the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
> development will falter. At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
> in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
> to be that it kills the community.
+10. There is significant danger if money is thrown some way because
"Squeak ought to do X, Y, or Z" without sustained support in the community.
Personally, I think bounties work best if they are used in the context
of an existing support network. For example, I would think that a bounty
for, say, "making loading in Monticello faster" might work because there
is a community of MC developers/users out there, it's a small, tangible
(and easy to measure) improvement and it's (most importantly) not in the
critical path of anyone (if it doesn't get done, so what).
Contrary to which I'd think that a bounty for, say, "use Oracle instead
of an image for persistence" (apologies to those out there who think
this is a bad example; I'm trying to make one up here since those that
come to my mind might step on a few toes...) wouldn't work very well.
It's (probably) a big project, the community by and large hasn't shown
much interest in this area and once it's over it's not at all clear if
the result has any lasting effect (since it's not clear if there will be
maintainers for such a project).
> So what else can we do:
[... snip ...]
> Individually, we can 'lead from the front'. In other words, lead by
> doing and hope that a sufficient number of others follow our example.
Unfortunately, this is very hard for anyone who is looking at bounties
as a potential solution - because a bounty is (at least in our
community) a clear sign that says "I can't lead that process" (otherwise
why don't you?).
> In the need category:
[... snip ...]
> We can remind those that express a need that their need would most
> quickly be met if they participate in the development required.
Amen.
> Anything else, if effective, artificially move the community away from
> where it would have naturally gone, so it is very unlikely to be
> self-sustaining. Otherwise, it's simply a waste, not having acheived
> anything.
Yes.
Cheers,
- Andreas
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